South Carolina Fire Department Servers Disabled by Hacker

Staff at the Bluffton Township Fire Department discovered they could not log into their computers Sunday and alerted IT staff, who discovered that records, files and email communications had been encrypted.

by Jake Shore, The Island Packet
/
March 20, 2020

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(TNS) — "If you see this message — this means your files are now encrypted and are in a non-working state!”

That note was discovered on the Bluffton Township Fire District’s computer servers on Sunday, which were rendered inoperable by a hacker, according to a report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

Staff at the fire department discovered they could not log into their computers Sunday and alerted Information Technology staff, who discovered that records, files and email communications had been encrypted. Late Sunday night, they reported the issue to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, S.C. Law Enforcement Division and Cyber Crimes unit for the FBI.

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Personal information on the fire department’s servers was not accessed in the hack, and the department’s ability to respond to emergencies was not affected, Bluffton Fire Capt. Lee Levesque said.

Levesque said the major problem is with the records systems, so the department is reverting to physical paperwork filing. Employees also no longer have access to email.

The department, which requested help from Gov. Henry McMaster’s office, is also getting help from the cybersecurity team of the National Guard in regaining access to their servers.

“Now only we can help you recover”

The hack comes amid a major shutdown of public life in Beaufort County due to the coronavirus and self-quarantining by many of its residents.

“It’s certainly not the most convenient timing,” Levesque said. “It does add a bit of stress to our operations, but we are ready to respond to emergencies, and we are ready to respond for the coronavirus.”

The hacker seemed to have been seeking communication with the department over decrypting its files. The ransom note included an email address to write to where the hacker would reply with “the cost of decrypting your files.”

The hacker included assurance that the files would be returned after payment.

“Now only we can help you recover,” the note read. Instead of responding, the fire department and its IT services went to law enforcement, as the FBI recommends.

With many educational organizations shifting their entire schedules to distance learning tools or full virtual environments indefinitely, never has the statement “we are all in this together” been more poignant.